Creating productivity tools at the intersection of product strategy, mobile software development, and user-centered design

Monthly archives for December, 2012

Why Todo-List Apps Fail



Within the productivity app space, it seems that every time you turn around, a new todo-list app has popped up out of the weeds.  They are written up as the killer app that magically changes you into someone who will actually gett things done. But none of them are ever up to the task.  There are many reasons for their failure, all of which fall under at least one of three categories.

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Features, Not Companies

To start, most of these apps only offer a one-off solution that solves a corner case scenario.  Fetchnotes makes it faster, Clear makes it prettier, Dunno makes it smarter.  But that’s just not enough.  We need a comprehensive solution.

Poor User Experience

Second, these apps fail in general product design.  People need something that is (a) simple and easy to use (b) available across a number of platforms and (c) powerful and extensible to accomodate a wide variety of ideas and media.  This is the basics.  And most already fail at that.  Let’s look at some examples.

Solving for Efficiency 

Finally, task-lists in general won’t turn you into a more productive person because they’re focusing on altogether the wrong problem.  Your issue isn’t efficiency, it’s not effectiveness and execution.

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Therefore, they all don’t work!

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Dropbox and Evernote Rivalry



Within the document syncing industry, Box has taken over Enterprise Storage, Dropbox has taken over Personal Storage, and the other players (i.e. SugarSync) have more or less died out.  Within the note-taking industry, OneNote has control over the Education market, Evernote has control over the Home market, and traditional players (ie. Moleskine) have learned to partner and adapt to the changing times.  However, as the dust settles in their respective industries, the battle between Dropbox and Evernote has just begun.

When one starts to consider the amount of overlap between Dropbox and Evernote, the similarity between the two services can be quite surprising.  Consider this: personal document storage mainly consists of personal notes.  On the flip side, personal notebooks greatly benefit from being synced across devices through cloud storage.  Since these services are just two sides of same coin, the two companies involved are actually fighting to solve the same use case for the same users.

Now, the logic above contains some major assumptions, but let’s see if we can validate this chain-of-thought.  To start, does Dropbox mainly consist of personal notes? Right now, the answer would be “No”, since Dropbox also stores images, presentations, spreadsheets, movies, code snippets, and anything else you can throw into a folder.  However, much of that can be labeled as “work-related stuff”.   MS Office documents, application code and visual designs are all files that sync across devices so users can work on them at any place and any time (one might even say it helps users become productive anywhere).  If we play out current trends to the extreme, then Box is the company who will take over the majority of those users.  This just leaves more personal items to be stored on Dropbox such as pictures of friends, family videos, personal checklists and other notes.  At the same time, Evernote gives users the ability to store more than just – the app can also capture images, videos, and lists!  With the addition of Clearly, Food, and Hello, Evernote can even help store websites, food memories, and names. Therefore, the first half of bridging the gap between the two companies is to realize that Dropbox will eventually be useful for fewer file types and Evernote actually encompasses more file types.

The other half of the equation is answering, “Does Evernote greatly benefit from being synced across devices through cloud storage?”  From a superficial standpoint, the answer is obviously “Yes.”  Evernote’s users definitely benefit from accessing their notes across a wide range of operating systems, powered by Evernote’s dedicated servers.  The deeper point though goes to the  question of whether or not Evernote is a cloud storage company, rather than just a standalone note-taking service.   Since Evernote actually offers a number of different apps, all built on top of their storage capabilities, one can respond in the affirmative once again.  More significantly, Evernote is pouring lots of support into their developer community to build out Evernote Trunk, where programmers can use various APIs to access all the notes stored in Evernote’s servers.  In this sense, Evernote is very much playing the role of general note storage, and leaving the content creation piece to third-party services.  Thus, Evernote is definitely in the cloud storage business.

All that being said, a multitude of other highly uncertain variables must also fall into place.  For example, one must assume other competitors won’t suddenly start gaining traction, when in fact the space is filled with players big (Google Drive, Apple iCloud) and small (SpringPad, Catch) alike.  Additionally, there’s the possibility that one of the companies starts to move into new territory, namely going after the enterprise market (Dropbox for Teams, Evernote Business).  Finally, there’s always the chance that customers opinions just change.  Altogether, there’s actually very little certainty of what will happen in the productivity industry, which is what makes it all so exciting!

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Dethroning Microsoft Office



What’s one of the reasons I’m so excited about productivity software?  A multi-billion dollar market is up for grabs.

In short, Apple should launch a full-scale effort to replace Office as the office standard.

I know, I know. I’m going to hear it from a small army of corporate-savvy IT types: You can’t replace Office; it’s too integrated into the in-house applications and workflow. iWork is just a toy, a plaything — not a real Office Suite. iWork is not secure. Etc.

You know what? That’s the same argument those same kinds of people said about why businesses can’t use iPhones. But now businesses are using iPhones (and iPads) in huge numbers. And they’re better off for it.

The “consumerization of IT” shouldn’t just involve hardware. It should involve software, too. Especially office suite software.

Is Apple iWork really the solution to Microsoft Office? Perhaps not, but just the fact that iWork could become a legitimate contender reveals something important, Microsoft’s iron grip on the market doesn’t look quite as tight as it did before.

[Reposted from: http://www.cultofmac.com/206183/how-apple-could-really-change-the-world-kill-office/]

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Chasing Your Dreams



Everyone in Silicon Valley says that they want to start something on their own, but then they don’t. And I don’t blame them. Trekking out by yourself is downright scary. The lack of a steady paycheck, no health or medical insurance in sight, and the uncertainty each day brings are difficult for anyone to handle.  So even though I’ve told others to take a chance and chase your dreams, I was always hesitant to take the leap myself. But 2013 changes all that. It’s time to eat my own medicine.

So here’s what happened. Back in late August of 2012, I started on my journey to learn programming, since my goal for awhile has been to become a rockstar Product Manager. I formed a study group through friends I met online, and we began meeting weekly to go through learning web development.

Since we were all starting from zero, our beginnings were pretty humble. The target was to get out a web app out by the end of year, but step one was just some basic HTML and CSS. Then, we moved onto advanced CSS3 and HTML5 with forms, so even though the pages were static, the content wasn’t. Next up was JavaScript, including some AJAX and JQuery thrown in. Each of these subjects took a couple weeks each, and as such, September, October, November flew by.

As November was coming to an end, I started learning Ruby, which was supposed to be the last step to making a web app. Wrong. It turns out that to program with Ruby, one must also master version control systems (Git), command line interface (Terminal), web server maintenance (Heroku), and databases management (PostgreSQL). And let’s not forget Rails – that Convention-over-Configuration, Don’t-Repeat-Yourself, Model-View-Controller monster of a framework.

Luckily, I had some SQL experience as a business analyst writing queries, and great co-workers who were willing to answer tons of my neophyte questions. More importantly, I was highly motivated to get something out the door according to the original timeline. So during the day, I worked on developing and executing mobile strategy as a full-time Mobile Product Manager, and at night, I coded. Over time though, I realized the window of opportunity was closing quicker than expected.

In the middle of December, a sudden move by the company would force my hand. The executives decided on performing some general restructuring, and due to no fault of my own, I was let go.  In fact mobile traffic, mobile revenue, and mobile margins were actually the highest they’ve been in company history!  As it turns out, this was quite a propitious event, as it gave me the free time to complete my project by end of year.  Right now, it is a race against the clock to get something done.

In the short period I’ve been at it so far, my thoughts and feelings have been all over the place.  The crazy part is that having read many start-up articles detailing the peaks and troughs, I knew this emotional rollercoaster was coming!  Armed with this knowledge, I was determined not be swayed by my fickle emotions.  But to no avail. In the past few days, I’ve experienced some of the most exhilarating times ever in my life, and when fear and trepidation set in, some of the scariest moments ever as well.

My dream is to get a job within the productivity industry, and I know I will make in someday.  For now though, I’m just bleeding cash with the palpable feeling of risk hanging over my head.  In the end, I don’t think there’s anything that could have fully prepared me for this journey.  But frankly, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

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We Are All Makers



When you code, you either produce a working program or you don’t. There isn’t partial credit for a program that mostly works. Even if only one line is written incorrectly within a hundred lines of working code, the entire feature is considered broken. Oftentimes, these types of small errors creep in when you are only able to give your work half your attention. Therefore, a common pre-requisite to producing great code is having uninterrupted “maker time” when you can dive deeply into a problem to figure out its solution.

In contrast, there is the concept of “manager time” where work can be done in piecemeal fashion and still lead to results. However, I believe that being effective in any endeavor, including management, requires a period of intense focus. In product management, the feedback loop simply isn’t quite as immediate, which has lead to the flawed conclusion that long periods of concentration are unnecessary for good work.

When a product manager digs through data spreadsheets, users insights and competitive analysis, a meaningful amount of raw processing power is required to synthesize and organize all of the information. The results of this process are usually tickets, specs, and requirements, which can be categorized as the action steps for the team. Next, a product manager has to lead the team in executing on these action steps to build product features and enhancements (and to fix bugs). After that, code gets shipped and consumers start to react to the new changes. Then, data starts to pour back in about how the product is doing – How do customers like feature X? How is engagement with feature Y trending? Finally, the product manager analyzes that data and uses it to inform the next round of decisions.

Sometimes, this full cycle can take weeks, or even months, before the company can make any type of conclusive judgment the on how well the manager did in deciding on the plan of action. It is clear though that the plan of action plays an integral part in determining the success or failure of the product. If the right feature wasn’t prioritized or if the wrong feature was cut from the roadmap, then there are consequences. Similarly, if the wrong view is being rendered or if the wrong variable was being passed to a method, there are also consequences.

However, in the latter situation, the feedback is almost immediate. If you run a broken function, an exception is thrown.  Maybe the error is caught later on by QA. In either case, you as the programmer know pretty quickly that something isn’t working. And a common cause of these errors is writing complex code when you’re not focused.

Granted, managers can check email or sit through meetings in varying bursts of time, but if they are to come up with effective roadmaps and clear action steps, long periods of concentration are absolutely necessary. It may not be immediately apparent that product managers are doing maker-type work due to the long feedback cycle, but in reality, even managers need a maker’s mentality in order to be effective at their jobs. Or, perhaps another way to look it is just that we are all makers.

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Get Work Done Music



Need a quick jolt of energy to stay productive? Well, if music usually gets you pumped up then you’re in luck because there’s this little site called GetWorkDoneMusic that does just that. With only two modes (Fast and Faster), it will get you going quicker than other more gray area methods. Enjoy!

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What Do You Do?



[Preface: This is a purposely provocative article that generalizes many events and ignores real-world exceptions. Please read with a grain of salt.]

The first time you start routinely meeting people and asking about their background is probably around college. Before that, you were only in high school, and you already knew everyone around you by virtue of growing up with them. College is often the first time you truly get a chance to discover yourself, so it’s no coincidence this is also the first time you start knowing how to describe yourself. During that time, your identity is represented by your major – or at least your planned major.

After graduation, when you meet new people at a get together, the answer to “what do you do?” becomes a conversation about the college or university you attended. While the individual school rankings are immaterial, the general level of the school becomes a basic gauge on who you are and what you’ve accomplished. Around the same time, asking what company you work for also becomes important since it also becomes a fair measure of your value.

A couple years later, after people have settled into their careers, people might start judging you based on your job title to determine your status.  You’ve found a good niche for yourself, and life is good.  For most people, this is where it ends. From that moment until retirement, your standing is based on how high you’ve been able to climb the corporate ladder, with some people making middle management faster than others.

However, for those who are truly successful, the appropriate response to “what do you do?” once again turns to what company you work for. However, this time around, you aren’t just another employee toiling away to get to the top – you are the top.  You are part of the rarefied elite leading the direction of the company, and when your company’s stock price fluctuates for better or for worse, there’s a good chance you had something to do with that movement. Therefore, your status is now closely tied to your company’s brand value.

On the next level, your identity becomes a matter not so much of where you work, but what industry you work in.  You have reached the pinnacle of your field, and the companies in it now clamor for your attention.  When you move from one one firm to another, it makes the front page news of your trade publication.  At this point, you don’t describe yourself based any particular company or job because your goals are much loftier.  The focus is now on pushing the envelope in a particular area, and you’re one of the few who can actually make it happen.

There is one final tier though.

What could possibly be higher than being at the top of your field? Well, some people have reached a point where they don’t even have to answer the question of what they do because the other person already knows. Their reputation precedes them. Celebrities, rockstars, and sports figures fit nicely into this category. Within the political realm, people who reached the Senate or higher probably count. In the business world, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

All this is to say, how do you respond when people ask you what you do? Do you tell them your job title or your company? Or perhaps you don’t have to say anything at all.

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Quote of the Month



If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.

– Samuel Butler               

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